Captain Future 02 - Calling Captain Future (Spring 1940) by Edmond Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

was opening the throttles to the limit as he spoke. The little space-boat darted Sunward at mounting velocity.
    Abruptly it shuddered, bucked wildly, and then righted itself and sped smoothly on again.
    “What was that?” Kansu Kane asked startledly.
    “Ether-current,” Curt replied briefly. The tanned face of the red-headed scientific wizard tautened. “We’re in a dangerous part of space —”
    “Captain Future! They’re after us!” Joan cried.
    Curt turned swiftly. Back there against the stars, the black mass of the Legion of Doom cruiser was again rapidly growing visible.
    “I thought they would be,” Curt said between his teeth. “And they’ve got more speed than we — our only chance is to duck and dodge until we lose them.”
    The old thrill of space-fighting came to Captain Future as he twisted and dodged out here between the stars. But the cruiser had too great an advantage in speed to be shaken off. And twice the space-boat ran into strong ether-currents that tossed it violently, making it lose ground. The Legion cruiser was steadily overtaking them.
    Curt wondered why the cruiser didn’t blast them out of space with its atom-guns. They could have done it, he knew. Why had Doctor Zarro been so determined to make them prisoners?
    “They’re getting closer,” Joan faltered.
    The space-boat was suddenly caught by another and stronger ether-current, that gripped it and swept it away despite the force of its rocket-tubes.
     
    CAPTAIN FUTURE fought to break clear of this strong, invisible current, but the rocket-tubes seemed utterly powerless. At appalling speed, the space-boat was whirled through the void.
    He realized the terrible peril into which they had fled. Its nearness had been haunting him during all this time.
    “The cruiser has given up the pursuit!” Joan cried joyfully. “They’re turning back — leaving us!”
    Captain Future’s tanned face was grim.
    “They’re doing so because they don’t want to be trapped as we’re trapped.”
    “Trapped?” cried Kansu Kane. “What do you mean?”
    “We can’t get out of this ether-current,” Curt gritted. “It’s too strong. And its whirling us on into the most dangerous spot in space, one from which no interplanetary ship has ever escaped.”
    Joan’s hand went to her throat. “You mean —”
    Captain Future nodded grimly.
    “Yes. We’re being carried into the Sargasso Sea of Space.”
     

     
Chapter 5: Trail to Pluto
     
    WHEN Otho, the android, and his antagonist, were hurled from the speeding ship of the Legion of Doom, the starlit desert was fully fifty feet below.
    Plunging down through the darkness, fiercely clutching his opponent, Otho made a supreme effort to twist his own body uppermost.
    The synthetic man, the swiftest and most agile of beings, succeeded in his maneuver. In the split-second of fall, he turned his antagonist beneath him, and it was that other man who hit the ground and cushioned Otho’s fall.
    Even so, the shock of impact nearly stunned Otho.
    Groggily, after a moment, he staggered to his feet. “Devils of space, that was close!” he hissed pantingly.
    He bent over his opponent, whose body had been crushed beneath him. The Legionary lay still, instantly killed.
    Then Otho’s eyes bulged from his head. He stared down at the dead body as though unable to credit his senses.
    “Am I going crazy?” he exclaimed to himself. “How in the name of the nine worlds —”
    An incredible, unnervingly fantastic thing had happened.
    The Legionary with whom Otho had struggled had been an Earthman. As they had fought up there in the door of the ship, as they had fallen in the starlight, Otho had seen that clearly.
    But now, in death, the Legion of Doom man had magically changed into a creature of weird and unheard-of aspect.
    His crushed body was now that of a semi-human being covered from head to toe with short, thick white fur! The feet were two-toed, and the grotesque hands two-fingered. The head itself